Catching Echoes (Reconstructionist 1)

by Meghan Ciana Doidge

  Pax shrugged.

  “We’ve tracked down five of you. Are any more of you going to die?”

  “Don’t think so.”

  “Helpful,” Kett said.

  “Listen, Pax.” I was anxious to move forward without violence or magic or biting. “My name is Wisteria —”

  “Like the flower?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your parents were weird, then.”

  “Yes. My parents were more than weird.”

  “I don’t game with Ben anymore.” The teen abruptly changed the subject. “I deleted my Unseen Arcana profile and everything. Well, the one I was using before.”

  “And everyone else in your group?”

  He shrugged. “You said they were dead.”

  “Do you know differently? A sixth member perhaps?”

  Pax shook his head.

  “Did they kick you out of the group when you said no?”

  Pax looked uncomfortable, but then shook his head.

  “You didn’t actually tell them no.” Kett pressed his fingertips to the door, pushing it back until it hit the teen’s shoulder.

  Pax swallowed. “They’re my friends … they were my friends. I won’t talk against them.”

  “Did Ben say no as well?” I asked.

  Pax shook his head.

  “Did someone send you a package?” Kett asked, taking one step toward the teen as he did.

  I laid a hand on the vampire’s shoulder, though I was loath to touch him. “Do you still have the package?” I asked quietly.

  Pax nodded, his eyes suddenly huge and fixed on Kett. He was white-knuckling the edge of the door, pressing back against Kett’s deceptively light touch and unable to move it an inch.

  “Go get it for us,” I said, quietly commanding the teen. I didn’t want to frighten him further.

  Pax finally looked at me.

  I smiled encouragingly. I thought about promising him that everything would be all right, but I didn’t make promises I had no hope of being able to keep. If Kett went for the teen, I had no way of stopping him. No one did, except maybe one of the Godfreys.

  The vampire took a step back, allowing his arm to drop back to his side.

  Pax let go of the door, stumbling away from it as if it had been holding all his weight, though he kept looking at me.

  “Please,” I prompted.

  “It’s in the garage fridge,” he said.

  “We’ll meet you outside.” Then I reached across the threshold and closed the door.

  After a moment, the bolt slid into place, locking us out.

  “He’s not even remotely telling us the truth,” Kett said.

  “And you know that how?” I descended the steps, turning toward the driveway. “By his heartbeat? He’s scared.”

  “I could make him not scared,” Kett whispered against my right ear, though he’d been nowhere near me a second before.

  I flinched away. But when I rounded on him indignantly, he was still standing by the front door.

  The vampire raised an eyebrow over his sunglasses. Again.

  Smug bastard.

  I turned away, deliberately walking to the center of the driveway and standing before the garage door. Kett appeared beside me. I tried to not flinch a second time. I was unsuccessful.

  “This is it,” I said, more than ready to articulate the ‘I’ve fulfilled my contract’ speech that I’d been practicing since Vancouver. “We get the package —”

  “If he actually has a package,” Kett said. “If he isn’t inside calling the police.”

  “— and Jasmine and I are done.” I ignored his interruption. “The package will lead you to the killer. Only five boys were involved, according to both Jasmine and Pax. You won’t need any more reconstructions.”

  “I have no objections,” Kett said. “I’m more efficient alone.”

  “Fine,” I said. “We agree.”

  A motor triggered from within the garage, lifting the door upward.

  I suppressed a smirk. Professionals didn’t need to be smug.

  Feet shod in shiny white sneakers, then legs clad in worn jeans appeared as the door lifted. Pax was waiting for us a few feet away, holding a square box about a foot-and-a-half on each side. When the door cleared his head, he stepped forward.

  “I don’t want to get anyone in trouble,” the teen said.

  “I know,” I said. “But your friends are dead.”

  Pax nodded mournfully, then handed the parcel to me. It was still sealed, addressed to him, and shipped from Astoria, Oregon. The labels were handwritten, and the box had been stamped and delivered by the US postal service. I wondered whether the Canadian packages had gotten through customs and into Colby’s and Dennis’s hands through sheer dumb luck. Deadly, wasteful luck.

  “Astoria,” I said, glancing at Kett. “I thought you said there were only five of you in the immortality pact?”

  “There was,” Pax said. “It killed the others, hey?”

  “You didn’t open it.”

  “Obviously.”

  “They killed themselves,” Kett said smoothly.

  Pax shoved his hands into his pockets. “Yeah? I got that part of the instructions. But why would you care about the package, then? If it was just a bunch of stupid suicides?”

  “Who sent this?” I passed the package to Kett in the hope that holding it would make it more difficult for him to strangle the teen.

  Pax shrugged. “Not me, obviously.”

  “But one of the five?”

  He shrugged again. Apparently, he’d talked himself out of his fear somewhere between the front door and the garage. “Don’t know exactly.”

  “Who started the conversation?”

  “I already said I didn’t know. I was invited last.”

  “By who?”

  “18Tennyson92. I don’t know his real name, so don’t bother asking.”

  “Why aren’t you playing with Ben anymore?” I asked, following up on what the teen had said earlier.

  “He’s weird, okay? And, like, sick a lot. So he doesn’t always keep up. His characters aren’t skilled enough.”

  “Recently sick?”

  “Nah. He’s got cancer. Or he did. A couple of times. Instead of playing, all he and the other three did was talk about death. And the game is boring if you can’t get past a certain level.”

  Kett turned away, box in hand as he headed back toward the SUV. Apparently, the interrogation was concluded.

  “Thank you, Pax.”

  “Whatever. Just leave me out of it.”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Right.” He walked back into the garage, slapping the door switch before he entered the house.

  I waited until the garage door was fully closed, keeping myself between Kett and Pax. Though I knew that no door would stop the vampire if he wanted in.

  ❒ ❒ ❒

  I climbed into the back seat of the SUV. Jasmine was leaning across the front seat, taking a picture of the package in Kett’s lap. The second she turned back to her computer, Kett sliced open the packing tape with a fingernail — a fingernail that slid through the tape like an exceedingly sharp knife.

  “I thought you were done with the investigation,” he said without looking at me.

  I tore my gaze away from his hands, looking back at the house across the street. I’d had no idea his fingernails were that sharp, and the revelation did nothing to settle my discomfort.

  “I’m not a bigot,” I blurted.

  “Excuse me?” Kett paused with the package half opened.

  “It’s not just because you’re a vampire. I don’t like anyone having access to the power you have at your fingertips.”

  “It’s not the power you should be worried about, witch,” Kett said coolly, “but the person who wields it.”

  “Same thing.”

  “If Pearl Godfrey had been standing beside you on the doorstep, would you have feared for the boy’s safety?”

  “Of course no
t.” I answered automatically, without thinking about it.

  A smile spread across the vampire’s pale face. I knew that if I’d dared to look, I would have seen a seething cloud of magic cloaking him, following him. But when I focused instead on his gaze in the rearview mirror, he appeared almost human.

  “Astoria checks out,” Jasmine said. “I don’t think the label has been forged. The shipping number tracks.”

  “And the return address?” I asked. “What are the chances it leads to our vampire’s lair?”

  Jasmine laughed, though with no humor. “Slim. It’s a dud. The street address is mistakenly or deliberately incorrect. So I can’t tie anything together yet. I don’t know if all the packages were sent from the same post office, or even at the same time.”

  “But someone walked into a post office in Astoria and mailed that package,” I said.

  “It appears so.”

  Kett glanced down at the box in his lap. “No vampire of power lives in Astoria, or in Oregon at all.”

  “Yeah?” Jasmine asked. “Vamps aren’t a fan of wine country or open ocean?”

  “Indeed,” Kett said. “Too much sun, perhaps.”

  Though I didn’t vocalize the thought, I felt quite certain it was more a matter of Oregon being too close to the Godfreys, and the territory of the shifters of the West Coast North American Pack, which was based out of Portland.

  “What about a regular vampire?” I asked instead. Kett’s wording had been quite specific. “Or a vampire traveling to Astoria to ship this package from there, trying to cover his or her tracks?”

  “We’ve already discussed the limitations of fledgling abilities.” Kett pulled open the flaps of the corrugated box, pushing aside some bubble wrap to reveal a bag of blood.

  At least it looked like blood. In an IV bag.

  “Blood?” Jasmine asked.

  “Yes,” Kett said. “Three units. Not enough.”

  “It’s not like we didn’t expect blood to be involved,” I said, setting aside his ‘not enough’ comment for a moment. “Did any of the coroners’ reports mention a transfusion?”

  “No,” Jasmine said. “But maybe the families didn’t request autopsies? When cause of death was so obviously suicide? I’m not sure what’s standard among humans.”

  Kett pierced the bag of blood with his thumbnail, then licked the blood off his thumb.

  I momentarily envisioned Jasmine and me being slaughtered where we sat.

  Kett shuddered, grimacing. “Old. And cold.”

  “TMI,” Jasmine said.

  “I have no idea what that means,” Kett said haughtily.

  “Too much information,” I said. “So? Vampire blood?”

  “Yes.” Kett didn’t elaborate.

  “So some vampire is befriending teenaged boys online and mailing them bags of his blood?”

  “So it appears.” Kett’s voice was distant as he contemplated the box in his hands.

  “How does that make any sense?”

  “It doesn’t.”

  “If the boys aren’t injecting or transfusing the blood,” I said, putting some of the pieces together, “then they must be drinking it.”

  “I’m not sure how quickly vampire blood would be absorbed by a human.” Kett acknowledged my supposition without actually acknowledging it. “Perhaps there wouldn’t have been any for the medical examiner to find.”

  “Are we heading into Astoria?” Jasmine asked. “I’ve got the address of the post office. That’ll give us a starting point, at least, and I’ll have some time to see if I can somehow link the packages, or figure out if the return address is just a typo.”

  Kett nodded, passing the box back to me, then starting the SUV. Jasmine typed an address into the GPS.

  “Should you have known this other vampire by taste?” I finally asked, since apparently Kett wasn’t going to offer up any more information.

  “Yes. Or his maker. Or any of his line.” He sounded peeved.

  “Should you know who this vampire’s maker is?”

  “We are not a numerous species. The Conclave will not be pleased.”

  “Once we find the fledgling, you’ll need to find his maker?”

  A slow grin bloomed across Kett’s face. “Indeed.”

  “What did you mean by not enough? When you saw the three bags of blood?”

  Kett’s smile faded. “I’d been wondering why the boys were rising sickly and weak.”

  “Not enough blood?”

  “Specifically, not enough magic in the blood. But there should be enough for you to attempt a reconstruction.”

  “What? In the back seat of a moving vehicle?”

  “Certainly. That’s why you are here, isn’t it? The only reason. To do your job. You’re capable of pulling an impression, at minimum.”

  Jasmine stopped typing, shifting slightly away from the vampire until her right shoulder was pressing against the door of the SUV. Reacting to the feeling of his magic rising with his cold indignation, perhaps.

  Either that or she was clearing my line of fire.

  I gathered my magic around me tightly, resolutely blocking out whatever might be emanating off Kett. I wasn’t as easy to rattle as I had been as a teenager. I wasn’t going to explode.

  At least not yet.

  “Yes. I’m still here to do my job.” I retrieved an oyster-shell cube from my bag, setting it on top of the box on the plush, white leather seat beside me.

  Kett smirked.

  He was totally manipulating me. And he’d been doing so since even before I’d laid eyes on him in Bishop’s. But that wasn’t why I was obligated to see the investigation through.

  Even with my speech outside the garage, I couldn’t ignore the fact that the dead boys still needed someone with no bias to speak for them. Plus, I knew without asking that the new lead provided by the box meant that Jasmine wasn’t going anywhere until we actually solved the case. And there was no way in hell I’d leave her alone with Kett.

  Gavin’s fiery death was seared into my mind, possibly imprinted on my soul. Someone had to pay for his pain and suffering. I might not be the person who brought criminal Adepts to justice. But I could still believe in retribution.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  We followed the package’s origins to Astoria, Oregon — now fairly certain we were hunting a vampire who’d used one of the dead teens as a mouthpiece or figurehead.

  By car, we could drive to Astoria two ways. Either crossing to the coast from Olympia, then entering the town over a massive bridge that spanned the mouth of the Columbia River. Or we could take the I-5 and cross directly west on the I-30. Naturally, Kett selected the latter, more direct route. Though with all the traffic on the highway, the two-hour-and-forty-minute trip wasn’t much quicker in the end.

  Jasmine was continuing to compile files on all the teens we’d discovered so far. Still following up on their other online contacts, real life friends, family, jobs, parents — anything that might give us another lead.

  While Kett drove, I managed to pull an image from the vampire blood. It was fuzzy, as if not particularly well lit. But based on the slight, tall build and the dark hair of the male figure I reconstructed, I was fairly certain it wasn’t any of the teens we knew to be involved in the immortality pact.

  The vampire pulled over at a rest stop near Castle Rock, just north of the Washington–Oregon border, to obsess over the image I’d captured in the cube. While he did, Jasmine and I popped into the washroom.

  We returned to the SUV, and before I’d even shut the back passenger-side door, Kett rounded on me from the front seat. “The image is barely discernible. Can’t you sharpen or lighten it?”

  “I’m not a camera or some computer imaging program.”

  Jasmine snorted, opening her laptop and settling back into work. I had no idea how she spent so many hours attached to a screen and keyboard. She was currently playing the Unseen Arcana RPG with a group of players that included a user who she thought was Benjamin Ver
n. Though the teenager was using a new username, he was still playing the game as a necromancer. We weren’t exactly legally investigating the suicides or murders of the boys, but I still wasn’t sure about the ethical implications of Jasmine befriending one of the possible suspects — or victims.

  Kett held the cube on the tips of his steepled fingers, looking back at me. “I understood you to be a more skilled reconstructionist.”

  “Hey!” Jasmine protested.

  “Try again,” Kett said, ignoring my cousin. Then he tossed the cube over his shoulder and into the back seat as if it were a piece of garbage.

  Angry, I caught the oyster-shell cube before it bounced on the leather seat a second time. Its magic slapped against my palms, reverberating within the container.

  “Whoa,” Jasmine said, swaying forward as if something had hit her from behind.

  Kett smirked at me in the rearview mirror.

  I wanted to strike him so badly that I actually caught myself raising my right hand. More magic reverberated around the car again — my magic, untethered by my anger.

  “Try it now,” the vampire said.

  “Wild magic is less than useless,” I spat. “Reconstructions are delicate, focused —”

  Jasmine tapped the space bar on her laptop a few times. Then she sighed dramatically, hammering the keyboard with exaggerated vigor.

  I peered over the back of the passenger seat. The laptop’s screen was black.

  “Damn it,” she said, somewhat theatrically and seemingly intent on dispelling the tension between Kett and me.

  It didn’t work.

  I clenched my teeth. My involuntary, reactionary casting had broken her laptop. Excellent. Now even more angry that the vampire had caused me to fry Jasmine’s computer, I slammed the cube down on top of the box holding the blood. Not bothering to relight my candles — which had been dangerous enough while driving during the first reconstruction anyway — I simply recalled in my mind the boundary I’d previously established. Then I pulled residual magic from the blood through the plastic and cardboard that surrounded it.

  No. I ripped that residual magic, channeling it into the cube.

  “I’m going to be useless without my computer.” Jasmine eyed the vampire pissily.